The Comic Art Convention was an American comic-book fan convention held annually New York City, New York, over Independence Day weekend from 1968 through 1983, except for 1977, when it was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and 1978 to 1979, when editions of the convention were held in both New York and Philadelphia. The first large-scale comics convention, and one of the largest gatherings of its kind until the Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, it grew into a major trade and fan convention. It was founded by Phil Seuling, a Brooklyn, New York City, teacher, who later developed the concept of comic-book direct marketing, which led to the rise to the modern comic book store.
It was called the Comic Art Convention and not comic-con....
Umm, they could only do that if they also refused all traffic from those countries as well - and Google isn't into creating the setup for new competition.
They tried it once in China, and pretty much got hosed by Baidu and a couple of others. Google can't afford to toss away countries (especially western countries) like toilet paper.
Yup. Of course, "Comic-Con" actually wasn't generic until SD made it an incredibly popular term. Their success (which is massive, without a doubt) is in part why the term "Comic-con" appears to be more generic today that it was when they started.
Their problem is similar those fought by Xerox and others (including Google) face when their trade name becomes commonly used to describe the activity occuring in any place. Back in the day, "Xerox this for me" was about as common as "Google that" is today. Comic-Con may have been unique when they started, but these days Anything-con is about as common as it gets.
The NBA logo actually does more for the MLB logo than it hurts - specifically making that style the unofficial style for major league sports in the US.
With the NBA logo already out there with the same style and nearly the same colors means that the Overwatch logo isn't even in the same league. It's got some similar features, but not enough to make it matter.
MLB can mull all it likes, but I can't see them standing a chance here.
One of the advantages of pulling the ISPs out of the media companies is that the law could move to turn them into utilities, similar to electricity or water - and then regulate prices, set standards (for speeds, connectivity, and contention ratios).
It would mean that a monopoly would be pointless from a business standpoint.
"The law already existed, what changed was which which part of it applied"
Realistically, who a law applies or doesn't apply to really should be written in the law, and not changed in the fly at the administration level.
"Were it not for the giant elephant in the room"
I think it goes beyond that. Politicians have to weigh both the public desire and the desires of business, plus they have to consider if what each side is asking for is realistic. Right now, neither side is really offering a solid argument, there is much discussion of what NN really means, and there is equal discussion of what it means if it is removed (or should we say "not activated"). Congress would be weak on it mostly because they would look for something to try to satisfy the most of both sides, the results would likely be a grey nothing. But that in itself highlights how much the FCC has overreached in putting in place rules (without laws) that satisfy one side almost completely and do nothing but harm the other.
" 'what's the best way to mitigate the problems caused by the current situation?' realm."
The funny part is that I think this is something congress could handle much more easily. Congress (working with the FTC and the FCC) could mandate a period for the media companies to divest themselves of their delivery services. It might take a long time (10 years, example) but it would be a huge boon for the internet, phone, and cable companies.
"Don't really buy the Google connection though"
Everything Google does has at least one foot in "increase search traffic and uptake of other Google services". Income from Search ads is what pays the bills, right? The fiber product was priced at a point that generally wasn't going to make them rich - they had to make the real money somewhere else. I don't think you would see Google in the ISP business at all if there wasn't some money in it down the road.
It's the same reason Facebook is also looking at different ISP models, especially for the third world. They want to get the jump and be the first bit of internet and internet advertising for a whole new world of people. True NN will make that a non-functional business model.
You may think it's insightful, I think it's natural. When being an ISP is part of a larger media company's work, they will always try to find ways to use the tools at hand to their bottom line advantage. Net Neutrality in any shape or form will be a crock because these companies will continue to offer "value added" services inside their network that don't count against your "internet usage" because you don't use the internet to get to them (ie, you don't go out a gateway). It would make a pretty strong fight against the existing NN rules, one the FCC might lose. Either way, it could take years and years for it to wind through the court while the companies continue to offer it.
Breaking the ISP business out of the media companies may be the only way to get true neutrality. The downside is that you are likely to see higher costs as they will lose their ability to sell other services at the same time and to profit from a customer base. The last things Americans want it to pay even more for internet service.
Yup, if I remember they have a big copypasta problem as well there too, on the other side. The more things change...
"which of course leads to the question as to what exactly you think the agency's job is"
The Agencies job is to APPLY the law, not to create new law. Wheeler certainly pushed the limits (and I think past the limits) of rule making within the law. I don't think the congress has ever passed a net neutrality law or otherwise specifically granted the FCC the right to regulate the internet at that level. Everything is being done through back door means, rather than doing it the way it should be done.
The important point is this: When the FCC does something only with rule-making, it can (and almost certainly will be) reversed with the next chairman. It's not stable, and it's not a way to build confidence and investment. You want NN? Get the congress to pass it.
Truth be told, you get no net neutrality until you forcibly extract the ISP business out of the hands of content producers and distributors. If you really want neutrality, you need to make it so that the connection in and of itself is the only business, and that the end connection goes to a neutral point where nobody is favored. Even Google Fiber is a crock, because it's as much a play by Google to get more searches than anything else.
That all would require an act of congress. You won't see it.
Please remind me again of all the comments collected before Wheeeler arbitrarily enacted these "rules" without first getting congress to pass them into law.
Actually, what AT&T is doing is playing the perception of NN (free and open internet) to their own advantage. For AT&T, NN is not a free and open internet but a highly regulated and restrictive framework that makes vertical integration a complete waste.
They aren't lying - they are just using your own words against you.
The point is important - without considering the internal architecture of and ISPs network and how those ratios are set at each step along the way means that all the NN in the world and all the connectivity in the world at the gateway won't change what consumers see. Their networks are just plainly not designed to handle a sheer volume of end users all trying to download an stream netflix and their ilk at the same time. The process to upgrade that isn't a nickle and dime toss 20k at it and it's fixed problem.
It won't stop the seizing of assets, and in theory, as long as a case is "pending" they won't have to move forward. It doesn't appear that they put a time limit on holding the "evidence".
So they can still seize huge gobs of cash that people (oddly) wander around with, under the guise of building a criminal case against them. My guess is that it might actually take longer to get money back this way.
"Interestingly my provider has been consistently giving me 50/30 mbit for much more than 10% of the time and they have never complained about it. I'm a very heavy user even if you disconsider Netflix. And my ISP has NEVER ever complained and NEVER ever throttled anything. Guess my ISP is from another dimension, eh? Keep bullshitting."
For a guy in security and networking, you seem to work pretty hard to misunderstand. The 10% figure is how much bandwidth they plan to have per user. Now if you are in an area with a bunch of users who aren't around on your time, you might get your 20 to 30 at 100% of time as far as you can tell. But as a whole, ISPs don't buy 1 to 1 connectivity, nor do they network 1 to 1 connectivity. It's called contention ratio. Let me Wikipedia that for you:
"And that's why I know you don't understand what you are talking about. The equipment would make customer access to ANYTHING outside the ISP internal network better."
it depends on two things: If it was only fixing the problem created by Netflix and their desire to use ONLY level3 and nobody else, you would be correct. Netflix needed ISPs to peer directly with Level3 or they would have major network problems of their own. Not all ISPs choose to peer directly with Level3, many use aggregation services or peer directly only with other providers. Should an ISP be forced to add bandwidth or pay for more peering to satisfy the business models of others?
Oh, and I am not a shill. I would think someone as intelligent as you could understand the difference between not seeing things the same way and shilling. Son You Disappoint.
Hi Paul. Your comment is so full of information, it's like a whole library of nothing.
I put forward the idea of true net neutrality. That would mean no preferential deals to anyone. Get a private "paid for" connection from Google? That's not neutral, that gives them a big advantage over other search engines and ad networks that have to work through aggregated peering.
hat Netflix, Facebook, Google, and many others have done is build private networks to the doorsteps of the ISPs, and offering up peering directly with those ISPs so they don't have to deal with network congestion. That seems to create an unfair situation or preferential traffic.
Yes, net neutrality is about zero rating as well. But even without zero rating, you can create situations where one provider has better network access than another. That isn't neutral, is it?
"Digging through the archive I ran across an article from 2013 that mentions '14,212 Americans whose information DOJ reported obtaining via NSL' in 2010. You really think that there was over fourteen-thousand americans that posed serious threats to national security that year?"
Well, it's actually not too difficult. Assume that the average facebook user has about 40 friends. Let's say that in 2010 they investigated 300 people. Since you are likely to check each of the "friends" as well, you quickly end up with 12000 people getting checked out.
Part of the problem of an NSL is that because of their nature, we don't really know how deep they go. The Techdirt opinion pieces you link to (rather than linking to the full story) are full of maybe and possibilities, but few proven facts.
See, if you went deeper, you would see that the 14000 number is the number of requests, but they only touched about 6000 people. So they are making multiple requests (say ISP and facebook or twitter) for the same person to get full data. With friends lists and overlaps, it's quite possibly that only a small number of investigations ends up touching a fairly large number of people. We don't know (and that I agree is a bit of a problem).
"Also, 'suck up to the 1st amendment at every turn'? As though fighting back against the idea of secret orders with indefinite gag-orders is something bad? Seriously?"
No, it's not bad, but without considering what might be the compelling reasons, it's just knee jerk anti-government stuff. As I said, it's not hard to imagine them investigating one or two militant groups in the US, touching a couple of hundred direct people and then their friends, looking for emails, messages, or connections that might be a security risk.
I agree that there is a need to know, I am just not convinced that the need to know exceeds the need for discretion in an ongoing investigation.
The court ruling is hardly surprising. In fact, it makes about as much sense as is possible considering that it's not SCOTUS.
The First Amendment issues are clear, but at the same time the compelling interest of the state also comes into play. NSLs are not someone checking up on your Ex that didn't pay alimony, it's matters that are much further up the scale, national security really is a trump card on almost everything.
One thing that is clear: Nobody has made a compelling argument FOR disclosing the letters, outside of the intense need to suck up to the 1st amendment at every turn.
This thing will almost certainly trundle it's way to SCOTUS at some point. But with the Cheetoh getting to appoint a couple of ultra conservative wing nuts to the bench, it's very unlikely that the left liberal free speech arguments will hold much water. The law and order conservatives will have the day.
On the post: San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The Comic Art Convention was an American comic-book fan convention held annually New York City, New York, over Independence Day weekend from 1968 through 1983, except for 1977, when it was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and 1978 to 1979, when editions of the convention were held in both New York and Philadelphia. The first large-scale comics convention, and one of the largest gatherings of its kind until the Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, it grew into a major trade and fan convention. It was founded by Phil Seuling, a Brooklyn, New York City, teacher, who later developed the concept of comic-book direct marketing, which led to the rise to the modern comic book store.
It was called the Comic Art Convention and not comic-con....
On the post: Top European Court To Consider If EU Countries Can Censor The Global Internet
Re: Cost/Benefit
They tried it once in China, and pretty much got hosed by Baidu and a couple of others. Google can't afford to toss away countries (especially western countries) like toilet paper.
On the post: San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Their problem is similar those fought by Xerox and others (including Google) face when their trade name becomes commonly used to describe the activity occuring in any place. Back in the day, "Xerox this for me" was about as common as "Google that" is today. Comic-Con may have been unique when they started, but these days Anything-con is about as common as it gets.
On the post: MLB Mulls Over Opposing Trademark For New Overwatch League Logo
With the NBA logo already out there with the same style and nearly the same colors means that the Overwatch logo isn't even in the same league. It's got some similar features, but not enough to make it matter.
MLB can mull all it likes, but I can't see them standing a chance here.
On the post: Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
It would mean that a monopoly would be pointless from a business standpoint.
On the post: Top European Court To Consider If EU Countries Can Censor The Global Internet
"can"?
On the post: Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Realistically, who a law applies or doesn't apply to really should be written in the law, and not changed in the fly at the administration level.
"Were it not for the giant elephant in the room"
I think it goes beyond that. Politicians have to weigh both the public desire and the desires of business, plus they have to consider if what each side is asking for is realistic. Right now, neither side is really offering a solid argument, there is much discussion of what NN really means, and there is equal discussion of what it means if it is removed (or should we say "not activated"). Congress would be weak on it mostly because they would look for something to try to satisfy the most of both sides, the results would likely be a grey nothing. But that in itself highlights how much the FCC has overreached in putting in place rules (without laws) that satisfy one side almost completely and do nothing but harm the other.
" 'what's the best way to mitigate the problems caused by the current situation?' realm."
The funny part is that I think this is something congress could handle much more easily. Congress (working with the FTC and the FCC) could mandate a period for the media companies to divest themselves of their delivery services. It might take a long time (10 years, example) but it would be a huge boon for the internet, phone, and cable companies.
"Don't really buy the Google connection though"
Everything Google does has at least one foot in "increase search traffic and uptake of other Google services". Income from Search ads is what pays the bills, right? The fiber product was priced at a point that generally wasn't going to make them rich - they had to make the real money somewhere else. I don't think you would see Google in the ISP business at all if there wasn't some money in it down the road.
It's the same reason Facebook is also looking at different ISP models, especially for the third world. They want to get the jump and be the first bit of internet and internet advertising for a whole new world of people. True NN will make that a non-functional business model.
On the post: Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You may think it's insightful, I think it's natural. When being an ISP is part of a larger media company's work, they will always try to find ways to use the tools at hand to their bottom line advantage. Net Neutrality in any shape or form will be a crock because these companies will continue to offer "value added" services inside their network that don't count against your "internet usage" because you don't use the internet to get to them (ie, you don't go out a gateway). It would make a pretty strong fight against the existing NN rules, one the FCC might lose. Either way, it could take years and years for it to wind through the court while the companies continue to offer it.
Breaking the ISP business out of the media companies may be the only way to get true neutrality. The downside is that you are likely to see higher costs as they will lose their ability to sell other services at the same time and to profit from a customer base. The last things Americans want it to pay even more for internet service.
On the post: Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints
Re: Re:
"which of course leads to the question as to what exactly you think the agency's job is"
The Agencies job is to APPLY the law, not to create new law. Wheeler certainly pushed the limits (and I think past the limits) of rule making within the law. I don't think the congress has ever passed a net neutrality law or otherwise specifically granted the FCC the right to regulate the internet at that level. Everything is being done through back door means, rather than doing it the way it should be done.
The important point is this: When the FCC does something only with rule-making, it can (and almost certainly will be) reversed with the next chairman. It's not stable, and it's not a way to build confidence and investment. You want NN? Get the congress to pass it.
Truth be told, you get no net neutrality until you forcibly extract the ISP business out of the hands of content producers and distributors. If you really want neutrality, you need to make it so that the connection in and of itself is the only business, and that the end connection goes to a neutral point where nobody is favored. Even Google Fiber is a crock, because it's as much a play by Google to get more searches than anything else.
That all would require an act of congress. You won't see it.
On the post: Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints
Yeah, thought so.
On the post: AT&T Tricked Its Customers Into Opposing Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: AT&T Tricked Its Customers Into Opposing Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: It's even sneakier...
They aren't lying - they are just using your own words against you.
On the post: Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wyden goes "over the top"
On the post: Connecticut Latest State To Add A Conviction Requirement To Its Forfeiture Laws
it Won't stop
So they can still seize huge gobs of cash that people (oddly) wander around with, under the guise of building a criminal case against them. My guess is that it might actually take longer to get money back this way.
On the post: AT&T Tricked Its Customers Into Opposing Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Free market did that, no regulation required.
On the post: Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wyden goes "over the top"
For a guy in security and networking, you seem to work pretty hard to misunderstand. The 10% figure is how much bandwidth they plan to have per user. Now if you are in an area with a bunch of users who aren't around on your time, you might get your 20 to 30 at 100% of time as far as you can tell. But as a whole, ISPs don't buy 1 to 1 connectivity, nor do they network 1 to 1 connectivity. It's called contention ratio. Let me Wikipedia that for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contention_ratio
So sorry, no bullshitting, I accept your apology.
"And that's why I know you don't understand what you are talking about. The equipment would make customer access to ANYTHING outside the ISP internal network better."
it depends on two things: If it was only fixing the problem created by Netflix and their desire to use ONLY level3 and nobody else, you would be correct. Netflix needed ISPs to peer directly with Level3 or they would have major network problems of their own. Not all ISPs choose to peer directly with Level3, many use aggregation services or peer directly only with other providers. Should an ISP be forced to add bandwidth or pay for more peering to satisfy the business models of others?
Oh, and I am not a shill. I would think someone as intelligent as you could understand the difference between not seeing things the same way and shilling. Son You Disappoint.
On the post: Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wyden goes "over the top"
I put forward the idea of true net neutrality. That would mean no preferential deals to anyone. Get a private "paid for" connection from Google? That's not neutral, that gives them a big advantage over other search engines and ad networks that have to work through aggregated peering.
hat Netflix, Facebook, Google, and many others have done is build private networks to the doorsteps of the ISPs, and offering up peering directly with those ISPs so they don't have to deal with network congestion. That seems to create an unfair situation or preferential traffic.
Yes, net neutrality is about zero rating as well. But even without zero rating, you can create situations where one provider has better network access than another. That isn't neutral, is it?
On the post: Appeals Court Agrees Government Can Tell NSL Recipients To STFU Indefinitely
Re: Re:
Well, it's actually not too difficult. Assume that the average facebook user has about 40 friends. Let's say that in 2010 they investigated 300 people. Since you are likely to check each of the "friends" as well, you quickly end up with 12000 people getting checked out.
Part of the problem of an NSL is that because of their nature, we don't really know how deep they go. The Techdirt opinion pieces you link to (rather than linking to the full story) are full of maybe and possibilities, but few proven facts.
See, if you went deeper, you would see that the 14000 number is the number of requests, but they only touched about 6000 people. So they are making multiple requests (say ISP and facebook or twitter) for the same person to get full data. With friends lists and overlaps, it's quite possibly that only a small number of investigations ends up touching a fairly large number of people. We don't know (and that I agree is a bit of a problem).
"Also, 'suck up to the 1st amendment at every turn'? As though fighting back against the idea of secret orders with indefinite gag-orders is something bad? Seriously?"
No, it's not bad, but without considering what might be the compelling reasons, it's just knee jerk anti-government stuff. As I said, it's not hard to imagine them investigating one or two militant groups in the US, touching a couple of hundred direct people and then their friends, looking for emails, messages, or connections that might be a security risk.
I agree that there is a need to know, I am just not convinced that the need to know exceeds the need for discretion in an ongoing investigation.
On the post: Appeals Court Agrees Government Can Tell NSL Recipients To STFU Indefinitely
The First Amendment issues are clear, but at the same time the compelling interest of the state also comes into play. NSLs are not someone checking up on your Ex that didn't pay alimony, it's matters that are much further up the scale, national security really is a trump card on almost everything.
One thing that is clear: Nobody has made a compelling argument FOR disclosing the letters, outside of the intense need to suck up to the 1st amendment at every turn.
This thing will almost certainly trundle it's way to SCOTUS at some point. But with the Cheetoh getting to appoint a couple of ultra conservative wing nuts to the bench, it's very unlikely that the left liberal free speech arguments will hold much water. The law and order conservatives will have the day.
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